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Tuesday, 26 January 2010

South Africa: Rubber necks, stiff backs

We flew out of Cape Town at 22:40, 22 degrees, into a typical January London morning — 3 degrees, dense low cloud, people shuffling around trying to hold their colds at bay. Now back in the UK, and wallowing in seemingly unimited bandwidth, it seems the main problem about South Africa is also its greatest joy — it's a long way away.It’s been a wonderful experience for us both, out of which it would be good this week to share a few photos and some larger questions South Africa raised for me. Today, hacking through a forest of emails and gunk, a few orientation pictures of the Cape Peninsular, including some animate and inainamte animals, that demonstrate how everything seems technicolor in clean air, especially in midsummer.

5 comments:

Steve, thanks for your kind wishes — and my apologies that I intended to publish your comment, but the last one in the list was a spam advertising one, and I accoidentlly rejected your comment along with theirs — part of the annyance of Spam comments on blogs. Grrrr. We'd love to be back sometime — all ideas on a postcard in a year or so's time!

I am pleased to see that you had a Good Time whilst Out there. I had a similar Experience when I went to Lanzarote.I met my Uncle and his Partner when I got out there. When I came back (a day late because of the snow) it was Freezing and we had to wait for a bus. I like the Pictures. I will try and remember the Distance from European Cities. I have a few friends who have to South Africa and I would love to go, if I got the chance, especially after seeing your photographs. While you were away, I switched to the Diocese of Southwark for my Blog Reading and Commenting.

Welcome Back.

With regard to my talk on Living With Autism, How much Notice do I need to give you of the Date? I know that Bishops Diaries gets full pretty quickly.

I've never been to Lanzarotte, but can well imagine the contrast coming back to the UK when we had the snow on. I think it was very difficult to get the planes in and out as well... A good friend and colleague was telling me she was off to Vienna for a couple of days, where the temperature was -14 at night!

You're right, diaries do get full, but it's a funny thing, there are sometimes surprisingly free evenings. I hope one of them is the one you do your talk... Sometimes the problem isn't that I've got something else, but thatI'm the wrong end of Bucks, as it takes a good couple of hours at some times of day to get from one end to the other. So if you let me know when you can. I'll see what I can do.

Hello Bishop AlanI have lurked on the outside reading your blog for the past year - and was delighted to see that you visited my city. Glad you enjoyed the summer sun and had time to relax. May God be with you.Pete

Thanks, Pete — I know everywhere's got its problems, but you have amagical place there! Espacially after the snow early January round here we really appreciated warm sun, warm people, even (heresy?) getting away from the computer for a change.

Child of God by adoption and grace, husband of Lucy, father of five, jumped-up vicar (Area Bishop of Buckingham).
Born Edinburgh. Deacon 1979, Priest 1980, Bishop 2003. Cambridge MA, Oxford DPhil — ‘I am a doctor, but not the kind that helps people.’ I trained for ordained ministry at Wycliffe Hall. I have worked in various C of E contexts, urban and suburban, as well as in prison.